Steam Client Beta - Steam Client Beta - October 15th - Steam News
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The Steam Client Beta has been updated with the following changes: Steam Achievement SetsA new way to organize, track, and complete a game's achievements. Read more details in the announcement. Games can now organize and group achievements for base game and DLC content DLC achievements can be added via sets without breaking game completion Completed achievement sets remain completed when new sets are added Achievements and sets can be archived if they are seasonal or can no longer be...
  • mrbn@lemmy.caEnglish
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    12 days ago

    Does anyone know what the average delay is between a beta update and the update landing in stable?

    • zurohki@aussie.zoneEnglish
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      12 days ago

      The advantage to Steam going 64-bit is that most people can now remove all their 32-bit libraries.

      Previously you needed 32-bit libraries for most of the actual games you ran through Steam, so it didn’t really matter if Steam used them too.

      • mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
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        11 days ago

        The Steam client didn’t work as a compatibility layer though. It doesn’t really involve the client. Proton is the compatibility layer and it’s capable to dealing with the emulation

    • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
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      12 days ago

      Wine couldn’t run 32 bit games without 32 bit libraries. They added experimental support for WoW64 a few years ago and now it’s considered stable. There was probably just no rush to make Steam 64 bit if it still needed 32 bit libraries for older games.

      • notfromhere@lemmy.mlEnglish
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        11 days ago

        I asked WINE devs for WOW64 support back in XP 64-bit days. They argued about it and said no lol. Good to see it finally landed 20-something years later.

      • bookmeat@fedinsfw.appEnglish
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        12 days ago

        Distros have been pushing really hard for this since Ubuntu in 2019, then fedora in 2025 because it’s very hard to keep maintaining multilib and i686 for basically only wine and steam. So with this change we can finally get rid of that baggage.

        • Kangae_Hishiryo@scribe.disroot.orgEnglish
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          11 days ago

          Yeah, and what happens with users of older hardware (because they can’t or don’t want to pay for newer software, or because they maintain it as a secondary hardware)? Multilib/32 bit is still important today because of inclusivity and democratisation.

            • Kangae_Hishiryo@scribe.disroot.orgEnglish
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              11 days ago

              Yeah, and most of these people can’t because they don’t have sufficient resources. Most people who only owns a legacy piece of hardware does that not out of will, but because they can’t pay anything better. Now, these people works 8 to 10 hours a day and the time they spend moving from home to work and from work to home is, let’s put an intermediate value, 2 to 3 hours. That’s 10 to 13 hours out of work and travel. Now take into account they have to do things as cook, clean their house, take care of their children if they have, etc., and after all of that, they only have a few hours of rest, and they’re so fucking burned and broken by their routine that they won’t have the time or energy to do so. And it’s not better when you’re unemployed, it’s worst.

              Maintaining software, self-hosting and all that, is not for poors, is exclusionary towards them as is elitist and expensive. Not only of money, but of energy, time and computational resources… That with legacy hardware and such a routine nobody can ever have. Don’t defend that “just make it yourself bro” because that makes you a fucking asshole. Period.

          • zarkony@lemmy.zipEnglish
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            11 days ago

            Do you have an actual use case for this? Consumer hardware has had 64 bit support for about 20 years now. If anyone’s still rocking 32 bit only its probably a specialized situation that already needs a custom solution. I’m really only thinking of retro computing enthusiasts and industrial applications, neither of which necessarily need to be running mainline Fedora.

    • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      12 days ago

      Back when the very first Linux port of Steam was released, there were a couple of Atom CPUs still 32 bit and Valve is relatively slow to change the fundamentals of the Steam client.

      IMO one of be bigger mistakes Valve made and also the reason why I switched to the Steam Flatpak early.

    • Victor@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      12 days ago

      They now have AI agents to hold their hand while going through everything, perhaps.

  • jaycifer@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    12 days ago

    Noob question here, but what’s the benefit of moving an application like Steam to 64bit? I understand for memory intensive applications it allows for more memory usage (it was a big deal when Stellaris made the change) but does Steam often use more than 4 GB of memory?

    • bisby@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      12 days ago

      One of the benefits is only needing to have 64 bit libraries. With this change most people can drop their 32 bit stuff.

      Bits are literally “binary digits”. So more bits means bigger numbers. The reason you get more memory, is because when the code says “put this data in memory spot (number bigger than 32 bits)” … you cant with only 32 bits. How do you represent that number.

      Imagine that you want to put something in memory spot 150, but you only have 2 digits. You cant. Bumping it up to 4 digits, you can say “put this data in memory address 0150” and its fine. “bigger numbers == more addresses == more places to put stuff”

      So anywhere you need a number bigger than 32 bit represents, you can either just use a 64 bit number, or do a bunch of shenanigans. Those shenanigans require extra calculations inevitably. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,147,483,647 If youve ever seen this number before, it’s probably because of a 32 bit limitation. It shows up all sorts of weird ways.

      Bigger numbers here aren’t about taking up more space, just representing literally bigger numbers. “9999” only takes up 2x as much “space” as “99” but it repesents a number ~100x bigger.

      Sorry, I’m tired and rambling.

    • ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zipEnglish
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      12 days ago

      One of the reasons Steam held out for so long was that a lot of the games they host are 32-bit only. Games are built by a company, many of which have gone belly-up, so rebuilding the game from scratch is impossible. Making Steam 32 bit even though it could be 64 bit is a really effective way to guarantee a large chunk of their legacy products will still run. In a lot of ways, because of the nature of the gaming industry, Steam has it worse than most package managers/app stores.

      • utopiah@lemmy.worldEnglish
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        12 days ago

        I’m not sure as that’s about Steam the client though not on Proton thus Wine, which I bet will keep on supporting 32bit apps.

        • ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zipEnglish
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          12 days ago

          Remember that the portion of Steam users that use Proton regularly is less than 10%, if you include Deck users. That number is rising and is probably a major factor in the decision to switch, but it’s still a minority.

          • mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
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            11 days ago

            It still doesn’t matter for the Steam client. All it does is point to games and tell them to boot. The client itself doesn’t act as a compatibility layer so the 32-bit vs 64-bit game argument isn’t relevant

      • SirActionSack@aussie.zoneEnglish
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        12 days ago

        I don’t think it works like that. 64 bit Steam can manage 32 bit games just like a 64 bit OS can run 32 bit games.

    • cecilkorik@piefed.caEnglish
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      12 days ago

      The benefit to/for Steam itself is marginal. The benefit to the entire community is significant, because there’s now an entire metric shitload of obsolete 32-bit shit that can be safely deleted and forgotten for 95% of the Linux world and efforts can be focused on things that actually matter in the 64-bit world. The entire 32-bit ecosystem of libraries and system layers still had to be maintained and supported basically only for Steam’s sake, Steam was the only thing still using them for the vast majority of people. It’s not that Steam needs 64-bit, it’s that 64-bit is the standard now and has been for a long time, and Steam was the only thing that had no 64-bit version.

      It’s kind of like cutting loose the anchor that the community has been dragging around everywhere for years for no purpose. It was a totally unnecessary effort that just caused suffering and added no value.

          • chronicledmonocle@lemmy.worldEnglish
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            11 days ago

            Unfortunately, SteamVR with Flatpak is busted unless you use something like WiVRn. If you try to use something like the Steam Link app on an Android-based VR headset to do direct SteamVR streaming, it won’t work on the Flatpak because of permissions.

            Source: Been wishing I could use SteamVR on my gaming PC for a while without a third party solution.